The Brother Who Made It Across the Mediterranean

After midnight, in utter darkness, we had finally managed to lift all 665 people onto our ship. Many hours later, on our way to the Italian port of Taranto, a man came up to me on the quarterdeck.

‘‘Where are the dead bodies?’’ he asked me. ‘‘Have they been brought ashore?’’

He was Pakistani, dressed in that traditional white outfit of a long shirt and wide pants. A much shorter man stood next to him, wearing jeans and a yellow Adidas T-shirt with no shoes. The print on the T-shirt read ‘‘IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING.’’

‘‘His brother is one of them,’’ the Pakistani said, gesturing to the shorter man and explaining that he was only translating, as they had another language in common.

Our Swedish Coast Guard ship was in the Mediterranean as part of a European Union operation to rescue boat refugees, and I was charged with order and security onboard. I was a little taken aback by the man’s question, but I recalled that we were told during the operation that 14 of the migrants died on the way from Libya before we reached their boats. This was the first time I realized that some of the survivors must, of course, have been connected to those who died. We had brought only the living onboard.

I had just been so busy; there was too much going on, and we had to get everyone over to us. We concentrated on the weakest: the dehydrated children, sick people, mothers who were breast-feeding. They had had no food for days, and no water either. It was over 100 degrees on the Mediterranean, with ruthless sun and barely any wind.

The man who lost his brother was Nepalese, and they had traveled together from Nepal to Libya, mostly on foot. From there, they had heard, they could reach Europe with a smuggler.

The Nepalese man said nothing while the Pakistani recounted his journey. He just looked at me. Then he turned his head down so I couldn’t see his eyes.

After the Pakistani nodded at him, he took out a passport from his back pocket and handed it to me. It was wrapped in plastic but still wet from salt water. I tried to unfold the pages, but they stuck together, and I worried I would damage it even more, so I gave it back to him.

I understood that except for the clothes he was wearing, the passport was his only possession. I did not ask him many questions. I just said: ‘‘I’m sorry. I don’t know. But I will find out.’’

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Over the radio, I reached another crew member. I practically screamed a reminder that people had died on one of the boats. The Italians, who were coordinating rescue efforts from Rome, would know where the bodies were.

Before I finished my shift, I saw the Nepalese man sitting on deck. He was by himself, and the Pakistani was nowhere to be seen. He had just lost his brother, and no one was with him.

On my next shift, six hours later, I saw him again. He was holding a map of Southern Italy and studying it intently. One of my colleagues had given him the news that his brother’s body was not going to the Italian mainland, where we were headed. It was on its way to Messina, in Sicily, with another rescue ship. He was trying to figure out the distance in between.

Crew members kept asking one another for more information on the brother’s whereabouts. One said the men’s only money had been sewn into the brother’s clothing. I spoke to the Nepalese man on one or two occasions, when food was being distributed. He was 28, and his brother had been 25. It was not clear if the man had any family, but the brother had a wife and a child at home. I told the man that I had a brother, too, that he was my closest family member. I wanted to believe he understood me.

‘‘Where are you going?’’ I asked him. ‘‘Where were you headed with your brother?’’ He did not answer, so I did not want to press him. He was grieving, and he had this aura of dignity around him. And after all, it wasn’t as if I could promise him anything; I couldn’t offer any particular help or even say that I was sure the Italians were going to do something for him. I wanted to offer him a bed, but that wasn’t possible. We cannot offer 665 beds; we have only the deck.

After about 18 hours at sea, we finally reached Taranto. The Italian authorities were lined up and waiting to receive the migrants. We made sure they knew the man was the migrant with the dead brother, and we let him get off the ship separately so that he would not get lost among everyone else.

Before he crossed the landing, I went to him and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘‘Good luck,’’ I said. He still had no shoes and that yellow T-shirt. I wondered if he had been told what the words meant.

As told to Jenny Nordberg

Nils Sandstrom, 37, from Stockholm, is a lieutenant commander in the Swedish Coast Guard. He served aboard the KBV 001 Poseidon as part of rescue operations in the Mediterranean for periods in July and August.

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A version of this article appears in print on October 4, 2015, on Page MM26 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: The Brother Who Made It. Today's Paper|Subscribe